Barreiro: the foresighted bike booster

The Portuguese city of Barreiro, located in the Lisbon region, has just invested 4 million euros in the development of a 100k-long cycling path. This decision is driven by the promising environmental, energy, climate and public health benefits of bike use in the urban area.

Acknowledging the increasing importance of bikes in the city

In its resolution adopted at the end of 2015, the Barreiro City Council recalls "the current importance of addressing quality of life by tackling air quality, noise and GHG emissions in the city." The Council also acknowledges that "sustainable mobility, and particularly bike use, is increasingly popular, might it be for sports, leisure or commuting from work to home or home to school. As this trend will amplify in the coming decades, we will need to redesign our cities and change daily habits."

Planning the transition by integrating all strategies

By fostering the shift towards bikes and other types of soft mobility, the city gets engaged in new planning and land use dynamics across its territory. In Barreiro, this means cooperating with all local actors in the framework of a vast participation and consultation process. Moreover, the changes require working in consultation with neighboring local authorities. Barreiro also intends to become a place where different bundled sustainable mobilitystrategies, European, national, regional and local, are taking shape.

With this bold mobility strategy, Barreiro renews its longstanding commitment to the energy transition as a member of Energy Cities since 2007, signatory of the Covenant of Mayors since 2011 and coordinator of the working group on mobility issues of the Portuguese smart cities network. Barreiro is another shining example for the major role played by local authorities in shaping an energetically sustainable, democratic and low-carbon Europe.